Ajay Bijli

Ajay Bijli is known as the king of multiplexes. He was born on 9 February 1967 in Delhi. He comes from financially sound family. He completed his Bachelors in Arts from Hindu College, Delhi and went Harvard Business School to undertake the owner/president management program. He has two daughters – Niharka & Naina and one son Aamer. His favourite movie is Godfather. As he belongs to a business family, it wasn’t difficult for him to understand this profit/loss world. In the year 1988, he started working in his father’s transport business Amritsar Transport Co. at the age of 22. Though he never enjoyed it but worked sincerely like an obedient son.

Since it was his fathers and grandfathers wish. He married Selena in 1990. He confessed to his father about his desire to start something else of his own, apart from the family business. As a supportive father, he agreed to his son’s wish. In 1978, his father acquired Priya Cinema but due to loss of reputation of its property they faced the problem of controlled ticket prices and taxation. Later, Bijli took over the responsibility to run Priya. He was working in both truck and cinema business. He is the proud founder, Chairman and Managing Director of PVR Group. He renovated Priya with Dolby sound, to start playing English movies in the theatres.

For renovation, he spent Rupees 45,00,000. In 1992, Ajay confronted the hard time when his father passed away. His uncertainty of either to pursue the transport or cinema business was a dilemma. After consulting with his mother, he decided to continue working for both the businesses by putting more efforts. Priya became a hub in Delhi and also led other companies like McDonald’s, Nirula’s, etc. to come up around it. Ajay met John Crawford MD of village exposition to get in touch with Australian media. And they agreed to 60:40 joint ventures with the name PVR. By 2000, the company owned 12 screens under them. 2001 began with the great surprise when the multiplexes got freedom from paying taxes for five years by the government.

By 2001, the Australian company wanted to leave this venture and went back to Australia. Due to which Ajay alone had to tackle everything, even he had to buy 40% remaining stake too. But he was lucky when Bharti, Airtel and ICICI joined hands with him. Today the value of PVR Cinema is Rupees 13,50,00,00,000 and has 471 screens in 44 cities. He lives the good life by following three principles – It must be expressive, it must serve a functional purpose, and it must have aesthetic value.